Sam waited for his heart to slow.
He turned his head to face the window again. He saw the Overseas Passenger Terminal and remembered that he and Clementine were meant to be going to a restaurant there tonight. A fancy, overpriced restaurant. He didn’t want to go. He had nothing to say to her.
The thought crossed his mind that they should break up. Not break up, separate. This is a marriage, buddy, you don’t just break up like boyfriend and girlfriend, you separate. What a load of shit. He and Clementine weren’t going to separate. They were fine. And yet there was something strangely appealing about that word: separate. It felt like a solution. If he could just separate himself, detach himself, remove himself, then he could get relief. Like an amputation.
He stood suddenly. He held on to the backs of seats to balance himself as the ferry rocked, and went to stand outside on the deserted deck. The cold, rainy air slapped his face like an angry woman, and the kid in the raincoat looked at him with disinterest, then his gaze slid slowly away, as if Sam were just another feature of the dull, grey landscape.
Sam clung on to the slippery railing that ran along the edge of the ferry. He didn’t want to be here, he didn’t want to be at home. He didn’t want to be anywhere except back in time, in that ludicrous backyard, at that moment in the hazy twilight, the fairy lights twinkling in his peripheral vision when that Tiffany, a woman who meant nothing to him, nothing at all, was laughing with him, and he wasn’t looking at the outrageous Jessica Rabbit curves of her body, he was not looking, but he was aware of them, he was very aware of them. ‘Come on, Muscles,’ she’d said.
Right there. That’s where he needed to press ‘pause’.
All he needed was the next five minutes after that. Just one more chance. If he could just have one more chance he’d act like the man he’d always believed himself to be.
chapter seven
The day of the barbeque
‘Let’s just forget it,’ said Clementine.
It was nearly one o’clock, they were expected at Erika’s house for afternoon tea at three, and Sam and the girls still hadn’t managed to actually leave the house to give her the promised practice time. It wasn’t going to happen.
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘I will not be defeated by one small shoe.’
One of Ruby’s brand new, remarkably expensive, flashing-soled runners had gone missing and due to a recent growth spurt those were the only shoes that fit her at the moment.
‘What’s that poem?’ said Clementine. ‘For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost … and then something, until the kingdom is lost.’
‘What?’ grunted Sam. He lay flat on his stomach on the floor, looking under the couch for the shoe.
‘For the want of a shoe my audition was lost,’ murmured Clementine as she pulled the cushions off the same couch to reveal crumbs, coins, pencils, hairclips, a sports bra, and no shoe.
‘What?’ said Sam again. He stretched out his arm. ‘I think I see it!’ He pulled out a dust-covered sock.
‘That’s a sock,’ said Holly.
Sam sneezed. ‘Yes, I know it’s a sock.’ He sat back on his haunches, massaging his shoulder. ‘We spend half our lives trying to locate possessions. We need better systems. Procedures. There must be an app for this. A “where’s our stuff?” app.’
‘Shoe! Where are you? Shoe!’ called out Ruby. She walked about lopsidedly wearing one shoe, stamping it occasionally to make the coloured lights flash.
‘Shoes do not have ears, Ruby,’ said Holly contemptuously.
‘Erika says we need a shoe rack by the door.’ Clementine replaced the cushions on top of all the detritus. ‘She says we should train the children to put their shoes there as soon as they come in.’
‘She’s right,’ said Sam. ‘That woman is always right.’
For someone who didn’t want children, Erika had a wealth of parenting expertise she felt obliged to share. You couldn’t say, ‘How would you know?’ because she always cited her sources. ‘I read an article in Psychology Today,’ she would begin.
‘She sounds like one of those toxic friends,’ Clementine’s friend Ainsley had once said. ‘You should cull her.’
‘She’s not toxic,’ Clementine had said. ‘Don’t you have friends who annoy you?’ She thought everyone had friends who felt like obligations. There was a particular expression her mother got when she picked up the phone, a stoic ‘here we go’ look, which meant her friend Lois was calling.
‘Not the way that chick bugs you,’ said Ainsley.